Use Bluetooth to open your garage and start your car remotely

Instructables user [tcollinsworth] is a big fan of his Android smart phone. He practically carries it with him everywhere, so he figured it would be cool to integrate as many of his home electronics with the phone as possible. His garage door openers seemed like easy enough targets, and while he was in the garage, he decided to hack his car’s remote starter as well.

He put together a small circuit that allows him to trigger any device via an application called Daisy On/Off, made specifically for the Bluetooth board he selected. One set of pins were wired to the garage door opener’s terminals, and the other to his remote start key fob. Once he had everything connected up, he packaged his components in a project box courtesy of his MakerBot. With that finished, he put together a simple interface in the Daisy application which can start his car or open the garage with a single button press.

It should be mentioned that [tcollinsworth] works for Daisy, so the reasoning behind his choice of components and Android applications is an obvious one. That said, schematics for the Daisy Bluetooth board are available online and the device can be controlled using BlueTerm, so you can feel free to roll your own implementation if you wish.

Our only nagging thought is that the system should probably include a feedback circuit that relays messages to the phone, indicating that the door is indeed open and that the car has been started. Pocket dialing your car to start without opening the garage first would definitely be a bad thing.

yeah great. remotely start your car. what the heck? go on wasting gas like there’s no tomorrow. you’re not gonna tell me a car kept in a closed garage needs defrosting or a great deal of cooling before leaving?. here in switzerland you’re not even allowed to start your car before driving only for defrosting or cooling. if we go on wasting ressources like that, humanity is doomed… (oh right, we are anyway…)

Where I grew up we had to preheat the car just for the door latches to close again after opening during the winter. Alternatively of course we had a truck which did not have a properly working heater, and for that we used bungie cords to hold the doors closed while driving. Low tech solutions also work.

I’ve created something similar with a Netduino controlling some lighting and my garage door. Fronted it wi both an Android UI and a simple web UI served up directly from the Netduino.

I decided on WiFi to connect rather than bluetooth. This makes it more flexible as I extend it to control more round the house, and also gives me the option to expose it over the web if I want. For now I decided I keeping it local network only was better for security.

This is nice as a simpler option. I agree with the other posts about starting the car though. Who wants to come out to a garage full of carbon monoxide?

Cisco, why do you care what someone else does? If you don’t like it don’t do it yourself. If this guy wants to use fuel to warm his car so what? I only looked over the article but I doubt it indicates he will be using the remote ignition in the garage, just because you have a garage doesn’t mean you will use the remote starter in the garage. I have a garage and my cars don’t even go in there!

Cisco, no offense, it does not affect you and its his prerogative to warm up his car in the morning.

I live in Minnesota, and it can be cold as f**k during the winter. My car is in the garage over night but the garage temp can drop down into the teens or below. Every morning before I leave, I warm up the car so that my kids and I don’t freeze on the way to school. Selfish and ignorant? I think not.

Your blasting of his actions without knowing his situation sounds ignorant, imho.

The article says he works for the company where the bluetooth dongle comes from. I checked out their site and they are located in Rochester, NY. It is cold as hell there as well. I can see the desire to warm up the car before leaving in the morning.

And for those people in hot climates like Arizona or New Mexico, I would find it totally reasonable to start the car ahead of time to cool it off. There’s no pain like bare skin on hot leather.

You say: “here in switzerland you’re not even allowed to start your car before driving only for defrosting or cooling.”

That is probably the exact thing this guy is doing, so whats the problem?

@Cisco Sanfran
In the climate I live in, it’s nice to have a remote car starter. I have a heated garage this year, but last winter where I live, we have some days that are -40 C, cars won’t even start without an electric heater attached ot the engineblock overnight, and starting the car a few minutes early from inside my house while I get ready is realy nice. The 5-10 minutes of idleing really doesn’t use that much fuel.

Not to mention extremely illegal. I suppose you could hide in the boot, steer, drive and park the car remotely, wait till no-one is around then exit boot and close very quickly.
Just the thing for uhm, “black ops” methinks.

Ok, so the first implementation wasn’t ideal, par for the course. The car starter was primarily for demonstration – visual and audio effect. Locking and unlocking the doors is not as demonstrable.

I’ll be taking down the car starter and mounting one of my Daisy Arduino derivatives in each car. I plan to have it crack the windows when hot to keep the car cooler. It will automatically close them when it senses dust or rain.

Using either the Android GPS (battery hog) or just the Bluetooth proximity, it will unlock the doors as I approach and lock them as I leave.

Yes, the Bluetooth can be a battery hog too, but the Android app keeps it off except when necessary so it hasn’t been a problem. As for pairing and security, the device supports up to a 20 character pin code that only has to be entered once.

I’ve been using the device for a while, and it is quite quick and convenient.

I won’t be starting my car, wasting gas, and polluting the environment. My family tries to be environmentally conscious. We have a garden and our yard is not your typical suburban grass mono-culture. We welcome the native plants and insects like milkweed, clover, lady bugs, monarch caterpillars, and praying mantis. The kids love it.

you people are epic dicks, crying about planet being destroyed, wasting gas and bla bla bla. maybe you should look at your self before you criticize others. I can bet you half of you people waste a lot more stuff then he does. he didnt just connect his car with bluetooth to start in his garage he can start it anywhere like if hes at work and get off and its freezing outside he can start his car before he comes. THINK you RETARDS.